Melissa Joan Hart is best known for her work in front of the camera on Melissa & Joey,Sabrina, the Teenage Witch and Clarissa Explains it All, but she also works behind the scenes. Most recently, she directed the remake of the cult classic The Watcher in the Woods for Lifetime, and she is the director of tonight’s episode of The Goldbergs.

Hart first developed her directing chops on Sabrina and then Melissa & Joey, but The Goldbergs is a little different in that she isn’t a member of the cast.

“It was a little scary,” she says. “Mainly because I’ve done other TV shows but they were all pretty much in the first season. So, to jump into show that’s in its fifth season on a network was definitely terrifying, exciting, and thrilling. It was a little outside my comfort zone, so it’s the first time in a while I’ve been scared, which felt good.”

On tonight’s episode, Barry (Troy Gentile) joins the football team but is quickly benched by Coach Mellor (Bryan Callen) due to his lack of playing ability. He convinces himself the coach is testing him; but when Barry realizes the truth of his playing ability, Adam (Sean Giambrone) helps his brother understand there are other ways he can contribute to the team and comes up with their own version of the Super Bowl Shuffle. Meanwhile, Beverly (Wendi McLendon-Covey) designs jackets that she tries to get Murray (Jeff Garlin) and Erica (Hayley Orrantia) to sell when a national TV channel won’t.

“The real Barry always claimed, ‘I could be a quarterback for the Eagles if my mom hadn’t stopped me,'” Hart says. “And he still claims that. In this episode, this is Barry’s chance to really show that he can shine and be a part of the team, even though he can’t really play.”

Beverly Goldberg gets an idea to make jackets. She’s looking for a QVC product she can sell. She’s obsessed with QVC and decides for the Bevolution that that’s her thing; she needs to find something for QVC. She gets inspired by some static cling and a glove that’s stuck to Barry’s denim jacket, and she decides she’s going to make jackets covered in doilies and gloves and ribbon. This is a real story that Beverly Goldberg did do; she just glued a bunch of stuff onto clothing and thought it looked really good.

The Goldbergs is set in the ‘80s. Is that something that you have to take into consideration when you’re directing, that you don’t want anything to be too modern?

The thing is, the cast, the crew, wardrobe, the art department, they’re so versed on that and they have so much stuff on hand that after five seasons, they’ve got this down. They know exactly what the ‘80s were like. So I could really lean on them as far as the period stuff went.

There was a whole thing about the Super Bowl Shuffle in the episode, so I really studied the Shuffle what the football players did at that time during those rap videos that they all made. There were certain phrases and things like that.

I read an interview in which you said that Clarissa was like film school for you. Is that where the interest in directing was first born?

Probably. I was just so curious. I was a great student and then I got pulled out of school to do the show. So, it became my new school; just learning everything. What does that button do? What does this lighting board do? What does this camera do? What does this microphone do? How do you work this? How do you do this? Looking at the director scripts and whatnot, and figuring out exactly how they made their notes and how the story breaks down.

And then on Sabrina, it was such a complicated show and directors week after week would walk on and not understand how the animatronic cat worked, how the special effects worked, and I would explain it to them. One day, my mother who was the executive producer of Sabrina, was like, “Here’s your DGA card, go direct.” So I directed a bunch of episodes after that.

I loved the experience. I felt so creative. It was so exhausting, but it’s so creative, especially for me, just really fulfilling. And really being the storyteller and getting to to visualize it when you read a script, and then be able to make that story come alive is so exciting for me.

So is that what directing gives you that acting doesn’t — that you’re in charge of overseeing the project?

Yeah. You really get to make the whole vision come alive. One of my favorite things is sound design, being able to lay in sounds of music or pull stuff out, change the volume, or the way things sound or look, or color timing and camera lenses. It’s so much fun. One thing I really want to learn more of is filters and camera lenses.

I just feel like there’s so much there and there are so many ways to be creative and tell a story, even in really non-obvious ways. That’s what I love about directing. As an actor, I feel like I’m part of the puzzle. But as a director, I feel like I’m making the puzzle.

Do you feel that having started as an actress, as a director you understand what the actors need from you?

I believe there are a few different kinds of directors, but I consider myself an actor’s director. I try to make the work happen in casting. With something like The Goldbergs, obviously, it’s not going to happen because it’s already cast. But, with casting in a film and whatnot, it’s so important to find the right person that you feel can do the job. Then it’s just a matter of honing those performances.

You want to focus on the performances, but being able to trust people to do their jobs, hiring the right crew, hiring the right actors is a big piece of it. And then it’s a matter of adjusting those for you. I think that’s a huge part of it.

I always let people do two takes how they want to do it and then I go in and make my adjustments. That way they get a run at it the way they want to do it, and I get to see the way that they feel like this character would do it.

I know that in The Watcher in the Woods, the actress was really having a hard time with what to do with her hands. She was really uncomfortable just having her hands down. I had wanted her to have like a twitch of some sort when she’s uncomfortable. I told her to start playing with her necklace. If you watch the movie, you’ll see there are numerous times throughout the film where she’s playing with her necklace. It’s just a nice little device for her and it’s something that follows through and you can tell when she’s uncomfortable because she’s playing with her necklace.

Speaking of The Watcher in the Woods, you directed that which is a remake. So you can’t be completely opposed to reboots. What do you think of this trend for next season where at least six series are remakes or re-imaginings, including Sabrina; although Sabrina doesn’t sound like it’s going to be anything like your version. It’s called the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.

I think what they’re doing with it is smart. If you’re going to do one, do it completely different, which is great. One Day at a Time is doing the same thing; they re-imagined it in a different way, which is great.

It used to be that you would take someone’s idea and you would spin it up into your own idea. I don’t know why we have to keep remaking. But there’s something to be said about everyone wants a property, an IP [intellectual property] that has an audience. I think it’s a trend and I think it’ll end some time in the next few years. But then again, I said that about reality television, too.

What about Clarissa? How about picking that one up where we left off?

I think that would be a good one. I wouldn’t want to redo Sabrina the way it was done. But I think that Clarissa has a lot of potential because she was an interesting character. It didn’t really have an ending. So, I think that is one that you could explore again, but that’s all up to the showrunner and his rights to the property.

Going forward do you want to do more directing or do you still want to act? Or do you think you can do both?

I want to do both. I love the balance of the two. I love being able to step on a set, put on some makeup and make people laugh. And then I love to work for a few months on one project and really get really deep down and dirty with it by directing.

When I was done with The Watcher in the Woods, I turned to my mom, who was the producer, and said, “All right. I’m done. I’m exhausted. I can’t. I don’t want to direct again for another year.” I said, “I just want to put on makeup and say funny lines.”

And then I went and did a Christmas movie and I was like, “This is amazing.” And then I was like, “Okay, I’m done with this. Now I want to have control again.” It’s really a nice balance to be able to do both.

AMG/Parade Digital

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